Ajaw (Ajpu)
The twentieth and last Maya day sign, a face: Ajaw means lord, and scholars read it as the day of the sun god. K’iche’ daykeepers call it Ajpu, the Lord Sun, the hunter.
Meaning
Ajaw is the last of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count, written Ahau by Morley and Thompson; in K’iche’ it is Ajpu. Ajaw means chief or lord in many Maya languages, and the Ixil also call the day Kitix, sun. The Aztec day in the same place is Xochitl, flower (see Aztec day signs). The K’iche’ daykeepers of Komon Tohil, in Zunil, Guatemala, in an account of the days that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian reproduces on its Living Maya Time site, derive Ajpu from “life”, “destiny”, “plants” and “animals”, and call it the Lord Sun: it means hunter, marksman and walker. On this day, they write, people ask that the ideas the community has put forward be fulfilled.
Origin and history
To Morley, Ajaw was “by far the most important” day, found in the codices and inscriptions more often than all the others together. The Maya named their periods of 7,200 days, the k’atuns, after the day each ended on, and a k’atun always ended on a day Ajaw. Its plain glyph is a simple face; in the full forms, Eric Thompson wrote, it is a handsome young man in profile, almost certainly the young sun god, sometimes replaced by the head of an eagle or vulture. Ajpu, he noted, means “he of the blowgun”, the young sun god’s weapon in Kekchi and Mopan myth. His conclusion: “Ahau, then, was the day of the sun god.” Kettunen and Helmke give the Classic Maya name, with a question mark, as Ajaw.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsKukulkanThe feathered serpent of the Yucatec Maya, carved as serpent heads at the foot of the great pyramid at Chichén Itzá. Around the spring and autumn equinoxes, crowds gather there to watch a serpent of sunlight form on the stairway.
- The same shape in Buddhist symbolsMandalaA mandala is a sacred diagram of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist tantra, usually a circle enclosing a square palace with a gate in each side and a deity at its centre. Tibetan Buddhists paint it, build it in metal and lay it out in coloured sand for initiation and meditation.
See also
Maya calendar, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God, Maya numerals (bar and dot), Imix (Imox).
Sources
- Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (J. Eric S. Thompson, 1950), J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 589 (Washington, 1950), chapter 3, “The cycle of 260 days”; Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 87–88, “Ahau, Hunahpu, Ahpu, Ahpum, Pu, Kitix”
- An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (Sylvanus G. Morley, 1915), Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 57 (Smithsonian Institution, 1915), chapter III and figs. 16–17; Project Gutenberg eBook 43491, Project Gutenberg, chapter III, Table I; pp. 41 and 80
- The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar (Komon Tohil, Living Maya Time), Group of K’iche’ Day Keepers Komon Tohil, Zunil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, “The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar”, reproduced with permission in Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (PDF), National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, p. 2, Ajpu’
- Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Mesoweb, 2020), Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th revised edition (Wayeb and Mesoweb, 2020), Appendices, Tables X–XI, “Day names in the Tzolk’in calendar”, Mesoweb, Table XI
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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